The City of Ember

Ember is a city lit only by electric lights; there is no natural light, and the people live under a pitch-black sky without any way to make light portable. Ember’s floodlights turn on at six in the morning and go off at nine each night. Sometimes, the lights flicker and briefly extinguish in the day and everyone must stop and wait anxiously for the blackout to end. The generator and power lines (along with everything else in Ember) are old and running down in the year 241, and citizens fear the day the lights will go out for good.

Lina Mayfleet and Doon Harrow are graduating Ember’s school. Both 12, they and their Highest Class peers await their new job appointments on the last day of school, Assignment Day. Once Mayor Cole oversees each student’s random job selection, the students will become workers of Ember. Lina is especially anxious; she wants to be a messenger. Messengers make communication possible in Ember by running messages on foot, as there is no other way to get word to someone over any distance.

Mayor Cole congratulates the class and forewarns them of the grave responsibility that comes with growing up and accepting their role in Ember’s workforce. Lina’s friend Lizzie pulls Supply Depot clerk; she will be responsible for noting all the supplies from Ember’s under-city storerooms that are gathered by shopkeepers for the people of Ember. Other students pull roles as electrician’s helper, repair assistant, and greenhouse helper (Lina’s second choice).

Lina, however, gets Pipeworks laborer, a dark, wet, dangerous job, far beneath the city in the tunnels near the fast-flowing underground river. She is miserable. No other student is as unhappy as Lina—until Doon. Doon pulls messenger, but angrily crumples and tosses the paper. Mayor Cole calls him “disgraceful” and tells the students they must appreciate how Ember prospers with everyone’s cooperation. Doon speaks out, shocking everyone: “But Ember is not prospering! Everything is getting worse and worse!” (13). After dismissal, Doon trades jobs with Lina; he wants Pipeworks laborer because the generator is in the Pipeworks, and he has “ideas” for making it better. Lina is thrilled to be a messenger after all.

Lina runs home happily. On Hafter Street several floodlights are out; she wonders about the rumors of a lightbulb shortage and if Doon is right about Ember’s troubles. She and Doon used to be friends, but once, when Lina and other children tried to climb a light pole and Doon failed like everyone else, Doon became enraged by the other children’s laughter and their friendship faded. Now Lina is interested in Doon’s ideas.

At her grandmother’s messy yarn shop on Quillium Square, Lina shares her good news. Granny is happy for her. Lina’s only other family is her baby sister Poppy; her parents died in the last two years. Lina takes Poppy upstairs to their apartment, which is filled with mismatched old furnishings. Lina has a collection of sketches of a city she draws often, a place she must have imagined since Ember is the only real city, surrounded by the Unknown Regions and complete darkness. She feeds Poppy canned carrots and tells her not to worry about anything.

Captain Fleery goes through the rules when Lina reports to work the next morning, including to never tell a message to anyone except the intended receiver. Lina delivers 19 messages on her first morning. In the afternoon, a man wants a message to go to Mayor Cole: “Delivery at eight. From Looper” (31). When she arrives, she flips through a copy of The Book of the City of Ember while she waits. The book includes information about the storehouses, which promise everything in plenty for as long the people might need supplies, and the timekeepers, who always wind the Gathering Hall clock. Lina knows that now and then a timekeeper forgets this task, and all of Ember loses time. Pictures on the wall of previous mayors include Podd Morethwart, her generations-ago grandfather, Ember’s seventh mayor. Bored, Lina wanders until she ends up on the roof of the Gathering Hall, Ember’s tallest building. She does a few dance steps to encourage waves from spectators below, but the chief guard catches her and angrily delivers her to Mayor Cole. He reprimands her, but when the mayor hears Lina’s message for him, he dismisses her behavior with a warning.

Doon is excited for his first day of work—not to repair pipes, but to study the generator. His supervisor, Arlin Froll, takes him down a lengthy staircase beneath the streets of Ember. She shows Doon the fierce, wide river from where it comes rushing up from “a deep chasm in the ground” to where it disappears into a hole in a wall (43). After they repair a pipe—a muddy, messy job—Doon sneaks into the generator room. He tries to ask a worker about the loud, monstrous mess of a machine, but the noise precludes any conversation. He leaves, upset that he assumed he could figure out the generator just by observing it.

When work ends, Doon asks a worker how the massive machine runs, and his worst fears come true: The old man says they don’t really know except that the river powers it. They oil and patch and try to keep it running, but this year is far worse with repairs, which won’t matter if they run out of light bulbs first. Doon goes home, wishing his mechanical talents were stronger. He lives with his father who runs the Small Items shop. Plenty of small items spill over into their apartment above, and when Doon gets home, he flings a random shoe heel toward the door. It hits his father coming in, but he understands Doon’s disappointment. He advises Doon to make the most of his new role: “Pay close attention to everything, notice what no one else notices. Then you’ll know what no one else knows, and that’s always useful” (51). Before bed, Doon observes a worm he found under a cabbage leaf and records its growth progress.

Lina discovers Granny ripping out the sofa stuffing, looking for something; Granny doesn’t know what it is, but her grandfather, the seventh mayor of Ember, talked of it importantly before he died. Worried about Granny’s confusion, Lina asks a neighbor, Mrs. Murdo, to check in on Granny and Poppy when Lina goes to work.

Lina takes a message to her friend Clary in the greenhouses. She passes the trash heaps on the way, where trash sifters comb through the piles looking for usable bits. Lina loves the greenhouses because her deceased father used to work there. Clary reveals that the potatoes have a disease and are nearly all inedible. Lina recalls when Ember ran out of cooking oil for fried potatoes, but eating potatoes in all other sorts of ways is a staple.

A man stumbles, weeping, toward the greenhouse. He attempted to leave Ember and traverse the sheer darkness of the Unknown Regions. His actions make Lina worry; to calm her, Clary shows Lina a small white bean and tells her how it contains life despite no one knowing how. Clary wonders what came before the Builders, how their city came to be, and why. Lina tells Clary about the other city she envisions, that maybe there is “a door that leads out of Ember, and behind the door a road” (69). Clary gives Lina the bean, a small pot, and some soil.